


the nakedness of the land

by Bushwah



Series: we the clay [4]
Category: Fake AH Crew (Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cults, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Anger Management, Betrayal, Boss/Employee Relationship, Consensual Infidelity, Crying, Dehumanization, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explosives, F/M, Female Jack Pattillo, Flirting, Forced Bonding, Forced Eye Contact, Gangs, Gaslighting, Gun Violence, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Interrogation, Moral injury, Multi, Non-Consensual Photography, Non-Consensual Spanking, Pet Names, Power Imbalance, Psychological Horror, Public Humiliation, Running Away, Sexual Harassment, Stalking, Trans Female Jack Pattillo, Trans Jack Pattillo, Trans Michael Jones, Unreliable Narrator, abusive found family, non-consensual domesticity, references to 'the office' (american tv)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah
Summary: Michael tries to run away.
Relationships: Gavin Free/Jack Pattillo, Gavin Free/Michael Jones, Gavin Free/Michael Jones/Jack Pattillo, Michael Jones/Jack Pattillo
Series: we the clay [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643119
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	the nakedness of the land

**Author's Note:**

> This is an FPF fic based exclusively on the Fake AH Crew lore as set forth by Rooster Teeth Productions. This work owes an additional debt of thanks to Wren wrenseroticlibrary.tumblr.com and their collab partner Threatie alastair-made-me-undo-it.tumblr.com, posting collaboratively as Wrespawn on the AO3, for their contributions to the FAHC fandom.
> 
> All major characters in this series are abusive, in that they use abuse tactics in conducting their relationships. However, the degree of trauma they inflict depends on a variety of factors, within and outside their control. Abusive acts committed from a position of extreme power, such as Jack's control over the respawn machine (regarding the crew) or the other Fakes' access to it (regarding outsiders), are both particularly damaging and particularly unjustifiable.

“Have you seen Michael?”

Gavin looks up to see Jack standing in the doorframe. He sets down his phone and stretches, pretending not to notice that he's nude.

“Last I knew he was heading out.”

“Well, he's not answering his com,” Jack says. “I was worried about him. I was hoping you'd seen him.” Jack sits on the bed next to Gavin, looking directly into his eyes (and totally ignoring his other assets). “He didn't tell you anything about where he was going?”

“Nope,” Gavin says. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“I don't know,” Jack says with a flirtatious smile, “what are you thinking?”

“I think he did a runner.”

“I think you're right.”

“Not sure what he was trying to get out of it, mind,” Gavin muses.

“Does it matter? We've got a Fake off the coms. Kingpin wasn't notified about a mission. I'm going to check on him.”

“Check on him, huh?” Gavin's got to admire how Jack shifts neatly from _runaway_ to _missing person_. “Don't suppose this checking on him, by any chance, would end up with him back here?”

Jack is silent for a moment. Then, “You know we can't let him just do whatever he wants.”

“I should hope not,” Gavin says. “I like him right here where I put him, and I'm not fond of the idea that he gets to leave.”

Jack looks at him with renewed interest. “So you're the one who put the hit out on him.”

“Your worse half did,” Gavin deflects. “Check his bank statement.” (She's not wrong, but the paper trail, such as it is, does lead back to Geoff.)

Jack rolls her shoulder, accepting the point. “But it was your idea.”

“Yeah,” Gavin says. No real point in trying to hide it, if she's already guessed that much. Besides, he likes having an audience.

“A man of unexpected depths.” Gavin bristles at that. “Relax,” she says, “I'm joking. So, Michael. I wonder if the hit's still posted?”

“Nah,” Gavin says, “it was taken down a week later.”

Gavin can see Jack doing the math. Yes, that was right around where Michael was put in the machine. No, that was not a coincidence.

“I see my husband and his paramour have been plotting without me.”

“Not hardly,” Gavin protests. “You're always invited to the party.”

“I might just have to take you up on that.” Jack looks at him like she's going to take him up on it right then and there, then shrugs. “Another time. I'm going out in the city to look for him.” She smiles apologetically. “Alone, I'm afraid. Don't want to spook him.”

“Right you are, Jackie!” She doesn't look as impressed as he was hoping by his enthusiastic agreement, so he continues: “And a good thing, too. He trusts me.” Gavin smiles, a predator baring teeth. “Wouldn't want to do anything to change that.”

This is going to be _fun_.

* * *

Really, it's too easy.

Michael was in the first place Gavin told Jack to look. More or less, anyway. He knew _why_ Michael had left; Micoo'd been talking about wanting to be alone. And Michael's always liked rough-edged places, being built or being unbuilt; being in the middle of things without being seen.

The room might have been inconspicuous enough to be missed, on the third story of a four-story construction project, if Michael hadn't set a tripwire between it and the stairs.

“Wish I was there,” Gavin says, watching through the buttonhole camera Jack had so graciously agreed to wear. “We could get both angles on the hallway.”

A shaking of the image; the beep of a text. “Don't worry about it. If it's really him, I've got this.”

She probably does. Gavin bounces on the bed, eager to see her work. She sets about disassembling the tripwire, carefully tracing it back to the source, disarming the explosives, and then testing it with a tug (Gavin gasps) before getting down on her belly and crawling under it.

Gavin wonders why she didn't just cut it. The difficult part was knowing it would be there, and he'd already warned her.

Jack approaches the door cautiously, crouching low to the ground. Her movements are silent. Michael has no idea she's there.

“As soon as you open the door he's going to freak out.” Gavin keeps his voice low, even though he's only talking to Jack's com. “Don't try to hold onto him; he bites.”

The camera dips, acknowledgement.

“Don't give him anything to resist,” Gavin continues. “Block the exit, but act nonthreatening. Try to engage him, challenge him. Make him feel like this is a game he can win.”

Jack pauses. The camera shakes again, Jack typing.

This time, the message is brief: “He can't.”

Gavin grins. “Not here. Not against us. Now take him in.”

* * *

The first thing Michael hears is the quiet metal on metal of the door opening.

Without conscious thought, he's pressed back against the wall, gun out, ready to shoot. Nobody knew where he was, that was the point, who—

Then he sees Jack and there's a roaring in his ears. His grasp on the pistol feels brittle and weak. _Do it,_ he tells himself, _shoot her now, run,_ but... he's already in trouble, and like this he might be able to spin it. Might be able to pretend he was doing something other than trying to get away.

He turns the gun so it's not pointing directly at her. He was startled, he tells himself; he wouldn't have done it if he'd known it was her. If he'd known it was someone he could trust.

“Mogar!” she's saying, and the use of his codename makes him flinch before he realizes that it's a good thing, it means she still considers him one of them, full blood. “Are you okay?”

He's still got his back to the wall, and he reluctantly disengages from it, lowering the gun. He was thinking about some stuff. Earlier, he was crying. He's glad Jack didn't walk in on that.

“Yeah,” he says. “I'm fine.”

Jack slumps a little, relief. “What are you doing up here?” she asks, seeming sincerely curious.

Michael laughs. “Just nostalgia, I guess.”

Jack looks around the unfinished room, all bare concrete and steel. “Nostalgia?”

“Used to spend a lot of time in places like these.” With his old gang, he doesn't say. “Hotel Quebec's great, but it's so complicated. You know? Here—” He stomps a foot on the concrete floor. “I can see what's holding me up. I know who this building belongs to.”

“Do you want us to buy it?”

Michael recoils. Jack is smiling.

“Okay, that's okay. Now you know you're supposed to take your com with you when you go out so we can make sure you're safe, right?”

“Yeah,” Michael mutters. He's tired. He wishes she'd just yell at him.

“Good, that's good. Why didn't you?”

“I forgot,” he lies.

“Okay, honey. I brought another com for you, it's out in the car. Do you want to come get it? Or would you rather stay here?”

Michael swallows. His eyes hurt. He's done everything he can do here. He holsters the gun. “Car's fine.”

Jack takes his hand and leads him out into the corridor, taking him toward the stairs.

“Wait,” he says. She stops. “There's a, a trap. That way.”

“Okay, honey. Thank you for telling me. How do you want to get down?”

He wishes for a moment that he could just jump. Fall and fall and fall and land. Break his body, maybe, to find solid ground.

He doesn't want to make Jack put him down, though.

He gets halfway through squaring his shoulders before realizing it's too much effort. “There's a ladder on the other side.”

* * *

In the car, Michael sits stiffly in the passenger seat. The com feels wrong on his ear, intrusive and unsettling. There's no chatter, not even static. He misses his old crew. He misses Gavin.

Fuck, he wishes the other shoe would drop.

She's taking him to HQ. He doesn't really care. She could have punished him in the car. She could have punished him in the building. Probably she wants everyone to see. Make an example of him.

He pictures it: Jack and Ryan and _Gavin_ all gathered around while the Kingpin—he doesn't even know. Spanks him, maybe. It's Geoff's style.

He doesn't, he realizes, want them to see. Doesn't matter, of course, but he doesn't.

Jack pulls into the parking spot in the garage and looks over at him.

“Oh, honey,” she says, reaching out toward him. He barely suppresses a flinch, but her hand just rests lightly on his shoulder. He feels strung too tight. Like there's violence inside him ready to come out, a tripwire waiting for the trigger. He left the trap in the building; he should take that down, someone could be hurt. He should—

“You're scared, aren't you?”

Michael squeezes his eyes shut. He isn't going to cry. “I'm fine,” he says. The words sound hollow even in his own ears.

“Are you scared of something that's going to happen, or something else?”

“Something that's going to happen,” he mumbles, slouching in his seat. He sneaks a glance at Jack, still tall and strong, and feels ashamed.

“What is it, honey? What are you scared is gonna happen?”

“When I go in,” he says, pathetically. “Everyone's going to be there. And—and they're going to _see_.”

“See what?”

“Whatever you do to me. Or Kingpin does. Discipline,” he adds, when she still doesn't react. “I'm not going to fight, it's just—I'm just. I don't want to.”

He doesn't know why he's saying it, but the soft pressure of her hand on his arm feels like approval, so he guesses he did it right, somehow. Inasmuch as he can do anything right when he just did something so monumentally wrong.

“Discipline? Oh, Mikey.” He averts his eyes. He knows she means well by it, but it feels wrong. He isn't supposed to be someone that name could apply to. “I'm not going to hurt you, remember?”

“Kingpin, then.”

“Geoff won't either, Mikey,” she says, with a conviction that makes him want to laugh. She's examining him like his body is a plaque and she's the curator. “Why would he when you did such a good job for us?”

Michael blinks. “...When?”

“Just now, honey,” Jack says. Her eyes are clear. Beautiful, she's beautiful. She should be the one on the pedestal, not him. “Even though you were scared, you didn't go far, you didn't make it hard for us to find you. I don't think you really wanted to leave. And then you decided to come home.”

He has the sudden, pointless urge to cover his face.

“I'm proud of you,” she continues, terribly sincere. “I'm so glad to have you back. I'm not mad at you at all.”

“You should be,” he says, barely above a whisper. “You should hate me. I tried to—fuck, I tried to run away, you telling me the Fakes don't have disciplinary action for—?”

“Honey, if you'd tried to run away, you wouldn't be here right now. You weren't really trying. You let yourself fail, let yourself be found. Do you have any idea how _good_ you are? How much I want to—” She bites off the words with a growl. “Geoff _won't_ get his hands on you.”

Weirdly, he doesn't feel threatened at all. He feels perched uneasily in his body, like as soon as he's startled he'll die, but Jack isn't a threat. The car doors are locked. It's just the two of them.

She's not going to punish him.

“What are you going to do.” He's too exhausted to make it a question.

“I was thinking we would go upstairs,” Jack says gently, “and watch that show you like, and I'll get Ryan to bring food. We don't have to talk or anything, and I'll make sure no one interrupts us. Does that sound okay, Mikey?”

“Yeah,” Michael says. “That's—yeah. Okay.”

* * *

So that's how he ends up in the master bedroom watching _The Office_ on Jack's love seat.

It's a different experience from watching it alone. Awkward, sometimes—the jokes about 'how bosses are' land different when he's in his boss's bedroom with his boss's wife. But it's a story, and it draws him in.

He wants to know if Jim and Pam are going to get together, and if not, why not. He wants to know if the team will meet their quotas. He wants to know what the competition is planning this time, how things are going to go wrong, how they're going to be resolved. He feels the comedic tension, the build and release, the setup, the punchline, the stinger; and he lets that become his world.

While they're eating—Ryan really does bring food—Michael catches himself laughing at the boss character when he's making another joke that fails to land just like Geoff always does, and freezes where he's sitting next to Jack, sure that he's done something wrong. But Jack just hums reassurance and drags her fingernails lightly along his scalp, and the tension fades.

It's hard to keep his eyes open. Somehow he got to be lying across her lap, his attention more on her than on the show. She's still watching, though, and she laughs quietly, more felt than heard. Michael doesn't get the joke.

**Author's Note:**

> Genesis 42:9.


End file.
